Meifang

The area around Tangxi Town in Jinhua, Zhejiang, was in ancient times the mountainous western frontier of the State of Yue. Descendants of Shang Tang migrated here, and over several thousand years their accent and way of life have been passed down without interruption, surviving to this day. Historical records call these people the Gumie, also known as the Gumei. In the ancient era of countless states and peoples, the Gumei held their own territory, known as the "Meifang." Centering on the family of the contemporary linguist Shen Zhaoping, the book focuses on the changing fortunes of four generations over more than a century, from the late Qing through the Republic, the founding of New China, and reform and opening up to the present: Shen Zhaoping's great-grandfather on his mother's side, Xia Yushu; his maternal grandmother, Xia Guangmei; his mother, Cheng Lanyu; and Shen Zhaoping himself. All the characters come from the Meifang or are connected to it by blood; their fates are the contemporary release of the unique culture and history that the Meifang has accumulated over centuries. A century of China and a millennium of the Meifang sustain each other as these fates unfold, imbuing the work with the depth and weight of vast spans of time. They walk forward from the late Qing and onward toward a nation ten thousand years old; what once seemed like the future is never quite here. This is not a national history of several generations rising and falling over a century, nor a tale of dramatic joys and sorrows, but a notebook that, through the ark of the Meifang and the forms of the Meifang people, bears witness to an eternal nation and an undying heart.